Given the pathetically low level of security at the NSA (Snowden was just a sub-contractor!) it's likely that everything they get is forwarded to the Russians, and given what we know of the NSA it's likely they have compromised TOR. So this probably is misdirection to fool the dissidents.

I thought that it was pretty easy to crack TOR, just run a bunch of exit nodes and suck up the data. Sure it doesn't let you target a specific individual but its governments we are talking about here, where the typical goal isn't to get ALL the people, just enough that you are seriously rolling the dice if you try thus causing a nice chilling effect.

I keep reading this, over and over. It's not true. Research encryption and you'll find you cannot just "crack" it, unless the algorithm is particularly predictable (almost no chance of that, billions/trillions of dollars and people's lives have depended on it, and much of it was made by the US Government).

Essentially encryption produces a random set of characters, where if brute-forced, would just result in a large set of various sets of random characters. Encryptions have been broken, but we've evolved bey

Remember, TOR was made by the US Navy specifically to anonymize the traffic of government spies. The public release of the project and transfer to EFF and later parties was specifically to provide cover for said spies. The current developers even consult with the NSA regarding it's security, and the NSA itself has tools to deanonymize it to a certain extent. (It probably relies on the fact that they run a large amount of exit nodes.)

There is so much wrong with your post that I don't know if you are vastly uninformed or if you are a troll.

Remember, TOR was made by the US Navy specifically to anonymize the traffic of government spies.

No, TOR was a project about creating the ability for people in repressive countries to be able to access the Internet in ways that their government was either blocking, or whose access could endanger the user since it was not in line with the government's decrees and/or filters.

The public release of the project and transfer to EFF and later parties was specifically to provide cover for said spies.

Ah, the standard conspiracy theorists' "that's what they want you to think, but really..." (fill in with unlikely or unsub

No, TOR was a project about creating the ability for people in repressive countries to be able to access the Internet in ways that their government was either blocking, or whose access could endanger the user since it was not in line with the government's decrees and/or filters.

On 03/22/2011 12:08 PM, Watson Ladd wrote:> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Joe Btfsplk wrote:>> Why would any govt create something their enemies can easily use against>> them, then continue funding it once they know it helps the enemy, if a govt>> has absolutely no control over it? It's that simple. It would seem a very>> bad idea. Stop looking at it from a conspiracy standpoint& consider it as>> a common sense question.> Because it helps the government as well. An anonymity network that> only the US government uses is fairly useless. One that everyone uses> is much more useful, and if your enemies use it as well that's very> good, because then they can't cut off access without undoing their own> work.

BINGO, we have a winner! The original *QUESTION* posed that led to theinvention of Onion Routing was, "Can we build a system that allows forbi-directional communications over the Internet where the source anddestination cannot be determined by a mid-point?" The *PURPOSE* was forDoD / Intelligence usage (open source intelligence gathering, coveringof forward deployed assets, whatever). Not helping dissidents inrepressive countries. Not assisting criminals in covering theirelectronic tracks. Not helping bit-torrent users avoid MPAA/RIAAprosecution. Not giving a 10 year old a way to bypass an anti-pornfilter. Of course, we knew those would be other unavoidable uses forthe technology, but that was immaterial to the problem at hand we weretrying to solve (and if those uses were going to give us more covertraffic to better hide what we wanted to use the network for, all thebetter...I once told a flag officer that much to his chagrin). I shouldknow, I was the recipient of that question from David, and Paul wasbrought into the mix a few days later after I had sketched out a basic(flawed) design for the original Onion Routing.

The short answer to your question of "Why would the government do this?"is because it is in the best interests of some parts of the governmentto have this capability... Now enough of the conspiracy theories...

It doesn't matter what the original purpose was. As long as it can be repurposed and it isn't backdoored and broken. Unfortunately, it looks like the protocol is weaker than expected, given the Carnegie Mellon mess. And of course there's issues with using JavaScript (which would allow canvas-based tracking among others). And it's easy to tell whether some IP is connected to the TOR network (and a VPN is a band-aid to that problem, and potentially broken given some of the language related to NSA's XKeyscore)

No, TOR was a project about creating the ability for people in repressive countries to be able to access the Internet in ways that their government was either blocking, or whose access could endanger the user since it was not in line with the government's decrees and/or filters.

No, you're wrong and OP is right:

http://cryptome.org/0003/tor-spy.htm

You DO noticed that the "rebuttal" is the typical deflection you see from politicians and large companies after getting caught doing something naughty, right? "Hey, you lied and cheated!" "No, what I did was about...." (a long answer that never denied the lying and cheating part)

"No, TOR was a project about..." noticed that the rebuttal did NOT mention who created TOR? The entire first sentence NEVER contradicted OP's point even though it started with a "No" -- "TOR was made by the US Navy specifically

Re the AC ' I do admit though that spies could also take advantage of it"
Read the origin papers the grants and funding:http://www.onion-router.net/Sp... [onion-router.net] https://www.torproject.org/abo... [torproject.org]
"It was originally developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting government communications."
The origins are Office of Naval Research and DARPA. Have a read of http://www.onion-router.net/Pu... [onion-router.net] AC.
ie bi-directional gov/spy communication that would hide the source and destination from ano

Incorrect. They want to be able to detect who is showing up some TOR activity and tag them as "suspicious citizens". Later on, they could try to infect target computers with their malware, the lot for which is posted somewhere nearby (it is nicknamed Chameleon-2).

Clearly our attempts to lead the commies out of the darkness and into the glories of the free market were not entirely successful. Surely a good, honest, American, defense contractor wouldn't even reply to an RFP for that kind of money, much less actually deliver, and comrade Putin wants a finished hack? The nerve...

I'm supposed to give an oppressive government details on how to crack a piece of software, and they'll give me (pinky to mouth) $100,000?

This is the same government that plays around with nuclear tipped umbrellas isn't it? That likes to shoot down civilian planes? If so what guarantees do I have that 1) I'll get the money, or 2) that I'll live to tell the tale?

Might as well give it a rest. Everyone knows that every country in the world except for the US and possibly Israel are a bunch of meek pacifists who would never engage in state violence of any type under any circumstances and even to suggest such a thing is now a despicable war crime. Although I have to say with all the peace, love, and understanding being spread around the world today I am pretty happy the US massively overspends on the military because were really going to need it in the not so distant fu

When the Iranian jet was shot down the naval task group had declared a 100 mile restricted airspace zone over the naval group which was in international waters at the time. Even today that is SOP whenever a carrier or other naval assets are in international waters. They establish and enforce the no-fly zone in the air and on the surface. Prior to the Iranian plane being shot down Iranian military jets had attempted to violate the restricted airspace several times a day over the previous 7 days. When the co

No, you give the makers of TOR a reason to make it better. The fact that you might get money for this bug-reporting is a bonus.The same reason you should be telling the people that there are security leaks in any other software.

Except if you wanted to do that, you'd report the bugs to the TOR developers. Russia would NEVER forward those bug reports, so all you'd manage is to let Russia exploit a flaw without allowing the TOR developers to know about it. You'd make TOR worse out of selfish greed.

You might want to check with these guys [hrw.org] about promises to pay. I talked to a talented Russian once who told me that you get promises of money before you produce results and promises to let you live if you go away quietly after you produce results. Of course, if you're sufficiently talented at interpersonal politics, you may convince someone that they will see more benefit in the long run by cultivating a relationship with you now, but this money doesn't relate so much to their initial promise as to your n

For the people this is targeted at 100,000 dollars is a very large amount of money. Imagine the hacker computer rig you could build with that! And imagine the street cred in finding holes in TOR (and patching them).

Re How the West could do it:
You need trust that the exit nodes are fast, well funded and NGO like. You need national level mastery of all packet traffic in and out of every tame provider.
Think of the cost of setting and funding per month a really good set of TOR servers/nodes.
You would really want the commanding height of the fastest say top 5 exit relays, then a larger pool of a good few 10's of other relays.
This would herd and make clear most traffic in a larger nation.
To cover this project set up a

Black Hat anti-Tor talk smashed by lawyers' wrecking ballBoring Carnegie-Mellon University lawyers have scuppered one of the most hotly anticipated talks at the Black Hat conference – which would have explained how $3,000 of kit could unmask Tor hidden services and user IP addresses.